Oppo, one of the most popular Chinese Android OEMs around, is expected to make its US debut before the end of this year. The intel comes from Taiwanese website DigiTimes, which doesn’t have a particularly impressive track record with leaks. While Oppo has had a significant presence in the US market with its Blu-ray players, it has so far stayed out of the US smartphone market, focusing its efforts on China and other Asian markets.
In the third quarter of 2016, Oppo is believed to have shipped over 25 million smartphones, making it the fourth largest smartphone vendor in the world, with a share of 7%. The three manufacturers that shipped more smartphones than Oppo in the same period were Samsung, Apple, and Huawei. In China, Oppo actually managed to dethrone Huawei to become the largest smartphone vendor in the country during the third quarter. Oppo aims to leave Huawei behind next year by becoming the third largest smartphone vendor globally. It plans to ship between 130 to 140 million smartphones next year, while Huawei expects to ship over 100 million smartphones.
Oppo owns over 1,100 patents related to photographic technology, including 200 registered globally. In order to increase its shipments, the company will have to continue optimizing the camera performance on its smartphones.
Since Oppo doesn’t have a “true” flagship smartphone in its lineup currently, we expect it to make its US debut with the R9s and R9s Plus camera-centric smartphones that were announced a few weeks back.
Source: DigiTimes
